Ricardo S. Morse

Prophet of Participation: Mary Parker Follett and Public Participation in Public Administration

While there seems to be widespread agreement in the public administration community on the importance of public participation, there is no consensus about what we mean when we use the term. This paper argues that we go back to the writings of Mary Follett (1868-1933) to inform the future of public participation. Although her political writings are now eighty years old, they have never been more relevant. This paper demonstrates how Follett provides concrete answers to some of the primary questions of public participation today. Folletts notions of circular response and integration, along with her thesis of neighborhood organization as a vehicle for democratic governance speak directly to the practice of a more democratic public administration.

Small Town Civic Structure and Interlocal Collaboration for Public Services

Local governments are responsible for financing and providing an array of public services ranging from police, fire, and emergency medical services to streets, parks, and water. Two mechanisms, civic structure and interlocal collaboration, have the potential to solve the problem of providing high–quality public services in the face of declining resources and increasing needs. We find that civic structure—citizen engagement in solving public problems—is positively and strongly associated with perceived quality of small town public services. Although many rural towns have entered into service agreements with other local governments, this approach is not significantly associated with citizen ratings of overall service quality. Citizens seem to prefer their local government directly providing police services rather than entering into interlocal agreements. This suggests that leaders and heads of departments providing public services need to carefully assess which services are most appropriately shared across governments to achieve cost savings and which support sense of community and would be better provided directly.

Teaching Collaborative Governance: Phases, Competencies, and Case-Based Learning

Collaborative governance is becoming a primary motif in public administration research and practice. There is widespread recognition of the need to develop leaders for collaborative governance, yet clear guidelines or standard operating procedures are elusive. However, while the literature is varied, a broad model of collaboration phases is distinguishable and core competencies are emerging. This article outlines a four-phase model of collaborative governance and corresponding competencies to help ground education and training for collaborative governance. The application of this approach to case teaching is demonstrated by repurposing a readily available teaching case.

Citizens Academies: Local Governments Building Capacity for Citizen Engagement

Many local governments have begun to offer civic education programs. These programs, known as citizens academies, teach residents about the functions of their local government and offer the promise of developing a more informed and ultimately better engaged citizenry. As a clear example of local government investing in civic capacity building, the emergent practice of citizens academies merits closer examination. This article offers a descriptive analysis of citizens academies in the United States and outlines key research questions going forward.

Learning and Teaching about Deliberative Democracy: on Campus and in the Field

Abstract College students, particularly those enrolled in public affairs programs, need to learn the skills of deliberative democracy. How can public affairs programs develop these skills and knowledge base among their students? This paper reports on a variety of efforts to teach deliberative democracy to undergraduates and graduate students through coursework and extracurricular experience.We describe how public affairs programs may include deliberative democracy in the curriculum through the teaching of basic participation models, the art of reasoned judgment, moderator skills, issue framing, and the crafting of research agendas from practice. Developing these democratic competencies will benefit students as future citizens and/or public officials.

Book Review: Investing in Democracy: Engaging Citizens in Collaborative GovernanceSirianniCarmenInvesting in Democracy: Engaging Citizens in Collaborative Governance. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009. 306 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8157-0313-6.

Collaborative governance is taking center stage in public administration practice and research. Today’s interconnected world demands collective action across organizational, jurisdictional, and sectoral boundaries. As a consequence, we have seen a steep rise in various forms of boundarycrossing activity in public administration, the variety of which we now put under the banner of collaborative governance, which is alternatively known as collaborative public management. Many related practices (and corresponding literatures) fall under this banner, but they can be grouped into two broad categories: (a) interorganizational collaboration (e.g., networked government, intergovernmental management, and public–private partnerships) and (b) civic engagement (e.g., public participation, stakeholder collaboration, and consensus building). Unlocking the Power of Networks by Goldsmith and Kettl (2009) and The New Public Governance? by Osborne (2010) are but two of many recent examples of collaborative governance scholarship from the interorganizational thread. Sirianni’s book, however, is a strong addition to the collaborative governance literature that comes from more of the civic engagement thread. His principal argument is that government can and should make deliberate “investments” in “civic capacity building that enables it to solve public problems effectively and to enlist diverse citizens and stakeholders to collaborate in doing so” (p. 21). Whereas other works (such as those noted above) focus on public agencies crossing boundaries, the focus of Investing is more directly on citizens and groups of citizens and how they are engaged in the process of collaborative governance. Investing can thus be seen as complementary to other collaborative governance scholarship that emphasizes interorganizational collaboration because, in practice, organizational boundary crossing and engaging citizen stakeholders are two sides of the same coin. In both cases, it is about public agencies engaging “nonstate stakeholders” as collaborators in the governance process (Ansell & Gash, 2008, pp. 544-545). However, it is important to note that acknowledging Investing is more from the civic engagement thread is not to say that it ignores the interorganizational dimension of collaborative governance. Rather, one of the primary contributions of the book is an extensive literature review of collaborative governance that incorporates and integrates the different dimensions. The book begins with Sirianni masterfully integrating several related threads of literature into eight “core principles of collaborative governance and policy design” (p. 42). The eight principles (detailed in the book’s second chapter and used as an interpretive framework throughout) are that policy should